11/16/07
Why do so many Americans feel threatened by the use of “foreign” languages in public venues?
Do they think people speaking in another language are making fun of them?
Planning terrorist attacks on the homeland?
Whatever the motive, many patriotic citizens think this un-American behavior must be stopped by making English the required language for conducting government and public business in the United States.
If the nation takes this simple step, they reason, all those (illegal) immigrants will be forced to go back to where they came from or learn English. Presto. Oops, I just used a foreign word. My bad.
In LA 101 our students learn that when a public course of action is being proposed, we need to look at the possible consequences such an action might entail.
If we find there would be unacceptable consequences as a result of implementing the policy, we should reject it.
It is our intellectual duty as critical thinkers to do so.
I believe this is covered in chapter two and even has a name: The Rejection Principle.
I may be guilty of the slippery slope fallacy (chapter six), but I have found many unintended, unacceptable consequences of an English-only policy for the United States.
Basically, under such a policy using a foreign language in the U.S. would be relegated to the closet, so to speak.
For example, we’d have to eliminate foreign language requirements in college, and that would put me out of a job.
This is an unacceptable (though perhaps intended) consequence that affects me personally, so I categorically reject its cause.
Religion and the entertainment industry would be early casualties of an English-only policy.
Catholic masses could not be celebrated in Latin, the Torah could not be read in synagogues and revivalists could not speak in tongues.
Rappers couldn’t rap in jive, opera divas could not sing in Italian or German, jazz vocalists would not be allowed to scat and Cajun bands couldn’t sing the likes of “Laissez les bons temps rouler.”
Why, I imagine that even signing would be verboten (oops, another foreign intrusion) in public, and foreign language films would all have to be dubbed. No more subtitles.
Measures like these, though unpalatable to some, would preserve the purity of the English language, which was meant to be the global language, just as American democracy and capitalism were meant to rule politics and economics world wide.
It is a matter of systems superiority.
Proof of English as the chosen language can be found in the story of how Joseph Smith was able to read the tablets he found inscribed in extraterrestrial hieroglyphs that encoded the Book of Mormon.
An angel conveniently provided Smith with a set of peeping stones that translated the alien text to, you guessed it, English.
Wonder what Mitt Romney has to say about that.
Of course, if we follow the logic of “When in Rome…,” Americans must be willing to learn the language of any country they plan to visit or invade.
If we demand others to speak English when in the U.S., it’s only fair that we speak their language when we visit or invade their countries.
Farsi, anyone?